


Outfox Vol. 5: “Exciting First Issue!” Part 5 - Elsegirls Ch. 1

by ExtremistComics



Series: Outfox [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftercare, Anal, BDSM, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Futanari, Hate Sex, Other, Parody, Polyamory, Porn With Plot, Roleplay, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtremistComics/pseuds/ExtremistComics
Summary: [CW brief sexual assault roleplay between consenting adults with clear lines between in-universe reality and fantasy; I would say it’s mild but I know I need to make that clear] Outfox debates how to handle the captured Stranger, while also “handling” some information out of her about the mysterious Foxcatcher. Outfox learns a lot about Sparrow during a tryst that gets highly kinky. We meet Outfox’ sister White Rabbit, who is also chasing Foxcatcher and has clues to the whereabouts of her new ally, the Red Queen. Then we end on a cliffhanger, because this story is three times as long as it was supposed to be! Also: sky pirates?
Series: Outfox [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951930





	Outfox Vol. 5: “Exciting First Issue!” Part 5 - Elsegirls Ch. 1

**I. _Shadow of the Fox_**

The woman in red swings her blade at me, seemingly intent not on slashing me open but on getting me further and further away from Kelly. Her bloodthirsty protégé has Kelly just about cornered, and with this deathly pale psychopath having more allies in this particular scrape than I’ve got, divide-and-conquer tactics are lethally effective. This one’s slashes are effective at corralling me, but Kelly has always fought with a brash determination that shows no fear of death whatsoever, no concept of her own mortality. Her own foe tries the same back-her-into-a-corner trick, but Kelly dives completely under her opponent’s wide, clumsy slashes, rushing headfirst into the painted maniac’s stomach. Jenny Diver’s cutlass flies out of her hand, off the side of my ship entirely, falling toward the forest below, less of a threat to unfortunate passers-by below than it would be if my _Capistrano_ were still sailing through the skies over Nova Londinium proper. Her own captain, the infamous Red Phantom, glances disappointedly in her direction, then gets right back to swinging her saber madly in my direction while her crew-of-the-damned advance their assault against the brave men and women sworn to my own vessel.

My name is Zora Miller. You might know I’ve been the captain of the _Capistrano_ since my courageous smuggler parents were murdered twenty-three years ago by the bastard fascists in the Royal Navy, but you probably aren’t aware I’m also the dreaded Black Fox, she who brought justice and liberty back to corrupt Nova Londinium just before the Red Phantom and her _Flying Dutchman_ returned to our skies and everything went properly pear-shaped. You will never hear me call myself a pirate. It’s not that I’m some champion of the law, I’ve no need for the approval of the crown or even the public. I simply don’t apply that term to people like myself who take our fight to the forces of tyranny not for the loot, but to show them what the people under their boot can still do, and for the sheer thrill of seeing the terror in their eyes.

My ship was once my parents’ sea vessel, but by the time I took up my jolly roger and devoted myself to my cause, the Royal Alchemical Fraternity had devised their new method of synthesizing large quantities of cavorite. Once the damnable Royal Navy had taken to the skies, the brave pirates, privateers and smugglers of the untamed seas had to do the same. Cavorite shipments were hijacked with such a fever that there were soon more bandits and brigands with airships than Navy captains and admirals. The feckless Royal Navy were no match for us, but there was an even more sinister threat on the horizon. The advantages of air travel had created too delicious an opportunity to resist for those less honourable, less scrupulous, less devoted to the cause of liberty and equality for all humanity. Many monsters took to the sky, some quite literal. Lady Salome Noir, ghostly captain of the _Flying Dutchman,_ lost a wager for her ship and crew to the cunning and cruel Erica Danvers, the dreaded Red Phantom. Wild tales have been spun about what that bet had tested, some saying she bet her soul against the lot on the promise she could scare the wretched Salome, but few drunken tavern fabulists dare even speculate on how she might have claimed that wager. Since Danvers brought the _Dutchman_ to the clouds, making war on other airships nigh-indiscriminately, the seas and the sky have been less safe for crown and criminal like than ever before.

But the valiant Black Fox, if I may say myself, stood against her reign of terror. We never bothered to take the fight to her undying crew, instead choosing to evade her ship entirely, showing that with skill and courage, it could be done. Putting even that dent in her fearsome reputation was unacceptable to her, painting a mile-wide target on myself and Polly, the whimsical alias of my beloved second-in-command Kelly. This is the first time she has boarded our vessel, and the worst seems to be upon us. Once Danvers has me off-balance, she pricks her own finger with the very tip of her blade, and presses it to my forehead, putting just the tiniest spot of her wicked blood on my face. “Burn for her,” the Phantom hissed, “burn for her.” In the corner of my sight, I see Danvers’ ruthless killer Jenny do the same to my dear Kelly. Like a bolt from the blue, Danvers and her crew begin to fall back, retreating to their ship. “There are fates far worse then even the death I could give you, Black Fox,” Danvers says cryptically, “and no living hell is a secret to the captain of the _Dutchman._ ” They break from us quickly, and Kelly runs toward me to make sure I’m in one living piece. Her hands touch my face, and my flesh sears with the full might of the burning sun.

I pull away, and touch my own face where Kelly had. No mark. I gently tap her cheek with the merest tip of my finger, and she jolts backward in kind, my finger feeling the scalding heat as well. She bore no mark, only the pain.

Adorned always in gloves, and keeping our distance, my beloved and I manage to spend the next few months avoiding the touch of each other’s skin entirely. We search the world from great city to great city seeking a cure for this curse, but none we can reach have even heard of such a thing. As we approach Ventura Bonita, a bustling city teeming with ill-gotten wealth and powerful magic on the coast of La Florida, once rumored to contain the fabled Fountain of Youth itself, our ship is tossed. There is no turbulent breeze, no damage to the vessel, no storm cloud approaching. Kelly and I stand dangerously close as a sinister hum fills the air, shivering us to our souls. Before us, a pitch-black hole opens in thin air. The wind rises, as if pulled into this door to the void. Kelly slips, nearly tumbling into the abyss, and I carefully grab her gloved hand with mine. She begins to lift into the air, pulled inexorably as I can feel myself also pulled. I need to maintain my hold on her, but if we touch carelessly, the burn we lay upon each other will make our bodies shake themselves free of each other’s grasps whether we try to or not. I let myself slip just a bit, bringing me toward Kelly slowly enough that I can get my arm around her back, her jacket between my bare flesh and hers, careful to keep the gloved hand at the end of my other arm clenched in hers without those bare forearms and wrists making any contact. “Kelly,” I whisper to her, “there is nothing awaiting us wherever this leads that holds any terror for me if I always have you by my side.” The pull of the void increases, and we let ourselves fall.

**II. _Outfox and Sparrow_**

Dr. Esther House does not approve of the conditions in her cell.

This thing was supposed to be a temporary holding pen for anybody we needed to keep inside the Burrow before they could be sent elsewhere. Since the law evidently frowns on civilians, whose only law enforcement power is a leather gimp suit with fox ears they wear at night, taking prisoners in the massive dungeons under their homes, we’ve gotten little use out of it. Certain laws having been written to account for the stubborn refusal of superheroes to stop superheroing, they do occasionally manage to get charges to stick against people I’ve arrested, but operating my own jail apparently crosses a line.

The cell is secure. Esther’s only superpower is psychological manipulation, but I’m an even bigger cunt than she is, and she’s going to have a hell of a time gaslighting an inch and a half of Lexan. Kelly stands guard outside the cell as I enter it, ready at a moment’s notice to deploy sedative gas on both of us if anything gets out of hand. One of the benefits of having a vast surplus of associates is that it’s very easy to rigorously maintain the buddy system.

“Where’s Foxcatcher?” I spit with no hesitation. “You mentioned you’d been working with her. She’s been sighted around the city again, doing God knows what, and I’m going to, not going to try, going to, bring her in.” I pause, unsure I even want to say my sister’s name. “Alice is going to, or I am.”

“I didn’t say we’d been working together,” Esther purrs. “We have, but what I said was pretty clearly that we were fucking. Was that implication somehow too subtle for the great detective?” She’s trying to drill into my brain, but her tool isn’t near sharp enough. She’s only getting explicitly sexual about Foxcatcher for the same reason she mentioned their relationship at all, because she thinks it disgusts me. It does. I know why Foxcatcher would want to be with somebody who looks exactly like me, and it’s indeed repulsive. The problem with shock, though, is that it’s hopelessly transparent. When you know somebody is simply trying to say the most offensive thing they can think of, it’s easy to maintain a clinical detachment. Nothing they say means anything if they don’t care what it means. You can’t provoke somebody who truly understand you’re trying to provoke them.

“What are you going to do, beat it out of me? I’m all in favor of that, but you don’t seem like the type,” Esther says. “Unless you’re willing to let me out of here, I don’t see what leverage you have.” “There must be something you want,” I say. “You’re going to be living in my pillow fort for quite a long time. We can bring you books, maybe a TV. I don’t know what you’re into lately, though. Kilo of coke, puppies to torture, snuff films, maybe a Bunny Scout? Don’t think I’ll fill any of those orders, but you can at least beg.”

“Well if you’re already going to the store to pick up blow and Bunny Scouts, I can think of one thing that you have to trade me,” Esther says, eyeing me lasciviously. “Not much chance of that, Ms. Double-D Indemnity,” I say. “What are you afraid of? I don’t bite, at least not on anything I can have fun with,” Esther coos. Innocently raising her shackled hands, pulling them as close to her shoulders as she can to complete the look, she says, “ _If you don’t trust me, you can tie me up._ ” She barely spoke in anything but movie lines when we were together, and I once found it borderline amusing.

I have no intention of indulging her obsession with me. However.

I ultimately think she’s right that I don’t have much leverage over her. She isn’t going to trade me nuggets of intel for magazines and cigarettes like a prison snitch. There’s exactly one thing she wants apart from freedom, and I care much more about putting a stop to Foxcatcher’s scheming than I care about giving my sociopathic ex a blowjob. The only question here is whether she’ll really play ball if I make that trade.

“Why should I even believe you’d give me anything? You just want to weasel one last fuck out of the one that got away. You’d have nothing left to gain from giving her up,” I say. Esther gets a hook in me. I can see in her eyes that she knows what it means if I’m saying all this. She manages to contain her excitement and play it cool, but I watch this little strategy session play out in her eyes.

Pausing a second to collect herself, she says, “She found somebody to help her build the machine or whatever. They’re almost done with a prototype. There, half up front, right? Give me what I want, and I’ll tell you who. And trust me, I’m not going to burn you. If I’m going to be playing Kat Kaelin in the Bunker for the foreseeable future, I’m going to want a little fox treat on a daily basis. And I have plenty of underworld tea to spill, as I understand young people say today when they don’t have your cock in their mouth.”

I try not to make her feel like she’s winning, keeping up a tough façade even as I give in. “Fine,” I shrug, “take it out. Might take a second though, I’m not taking off the handcuffs.” Esther smirks, then stands up, turns on a dime, and bends over, grabbing onto the back of the chair. “No, I think when we last left off it was actually your turn,” she says. I know what she’s doing. She thinks from behind, I’ll subconsciously begin to forget who she is and start really enjoying myself. The joke’s on her, though. She doesn’t understand the true depths of my hatred for her. I’m definitely going to enjoy what’s about to happen.

“Come on, In-and-Outfox. I’ve been a very naughty Bunny Scout,” she says. “That’s what you keep Kelly around for, isn’t it? She’d look so delicious in one of those little uniforms. If she ever has trouble deepthroating mommy’s dick, pigtails make great handles. Just remember to let her up for air eventually. I’ve made that mistake before with girls her size, and it’s not pretty.” She wants me to be angry, because she’s correctly predicted that I’m more likely to fuck her out of sheer hatred than anything else. And I am, but I’m accustomed to the rage she makes me feel now. I’m not going to lose control the way she wants. I’m going to lose control the way I want.

She’s probably been sopping wet this whole time, but she certainly is now. My cock enters her less like I’m pushing it and more like she’s pulling it. After Sharkbait, she might have the second most slick opening I’ve been inside. She was always excitable when we were together, but this is the first time we’ve done this as enemies, and as I’d have expected she’s a lot more aroused by this than by love and affection. Her dress, the one we found her in, is pulled up over her plump butt. She had it altered to look like mine, like everything else. Hers was toned and lovely, but not as large. She actually went a little overboard; mine was never this big. As much as she wants to be me, she wants to own me far more. She knows what I like. She made herself the version of me I’d want to be, or maybe the version I’d want to fuck. Narcissist that she is, she probably assumes my ideal woman and my ideal self are the same thing.

Trying not to get lost in the delectable rear I’m riding, I stop thrusting and resume my original plan. “Good thing you’re really wet,” I mock her. “I need a lot of help from my lovely assistant for this next trick.” I owe this one to Carla. I slide out of Esther’s cozy warmth and line up my resolute weapon with a different hole. “You did always like this,” I say, pushing my way past her defenses at somewhat slow speed, though not nearly as slow as I usually would, turning her own eager lubrication against her. “Good thing you get a lot more wet when you’re chained in a gulag getting railed by somebody who’d rather be strangling you.”

I hear frustrated growls coming from Esther as I transition with little warning from the first gradual slide to full-force pounding. That means very little as far as conveying her emotional state. Even when she was relatively stable, she was never satisfied with any penetration that didn’t push guttural, pained grunts out of her with every thrust, especially with anal. If she’s dissatisfied in any way, it’s most likely that the exuberant moisture I’ve carried over to this hole is making it not hurt enough. “You’re trying to make it unpleasant for me,” she finally manages to say. “You know that’s not going to work.” “I do know,” I say, “I’m ignoring whether you like it or not completely. I’m going to use you to cum, and if you don’t get what you wanted out of it, I’m going to leave you here with a box of Kleenex and go find Foxcatcher myself.”

I don’t know what layer of triple- or quadruple-bluff we’re on now, but I want her to believe this because it will turn her on. I need her to like it, even if I take the opportunity to vent some frustration into her. Gratitude is out of the question, but if she wants more, and she thinks she can get it, she’ll be forced to spill what she knows to make sure it keeps happening. I need to maintain as many contradictory layers of deceit as she can. I need her to believe this is just careful-what-you-wish-for hateful punishment sex, but I also need her to enjoy it, and to believe she can have it whenever she “trick me” into giving it to her.

Esther doesn’t make any more sound than she had been, but I feel the unique clench of a prostate orgasm pinch her entry into a tight squeeze around the base of my cock. I hear a trickle hit the floor below her. When she gets milked, she doesn’t pulse, she oozes, at a steady but rapid rate, like she’s pissing it out. She’s as dominant most of the time as you would expect, but the feeling of control is the only reason she defaults to spearing her lovers on her dick. She actually has much more satisfying orgasms from being fucked, even vaginally, but especially like this. She once told me that even her orgasms add up tension just as much as they release it. When she climaxes with her dick, or even her vagina or clitoris, it provides short-term relief, but also adds a tally to another column. That long-term tension builds up more with every climax, and the only thing that releases it is pushing her real button. I don’t know how often she lets anybody up her ass while she pines away for me, even as much as she craves it, so it’s possible I just wiped an awful lot of tally marks off her board. If I did, though, she’s containing her ecstasy quite well. Her legs are barely shaking, and she let out a tiny moan but not much else.

“Just because I started fucking you, that doesn’t mean I gave you permission to cum,” I say. I let out the little bit of possible thrusting power I was holding in reserve for just this moment, putting great effort into maintaining the illusion that I’m losing control. It also gives me the satisfaction of knowing she’s really feeling it. Her groans of agony are genuine. I feel her ass offer actual resistance for the first time tonight. This is the part she’ll be yearning to have again once I’m done with her. Very few people can make her experienced opening actually hurt. It helps when she legitimately disgusts you, but I’ve always known what she needs and how to give it to her.

I can’t keep this flogging up for long before I finally let go. I barely even registered that it was feeling pleasurable until this orgasm. I was focused on her. I was playing a game and our bodies were just pieces in it. My climax says otherwise. Maybe this is what I want, I think. Maybe the reason I end up turning my enemies into allies is that what I really want to do is fuck my enemies. Not as allies, as hated nemeses. Maybe I dress in spandex and leather and pummel dangerous strangers, some of them Stranger than others, because what I like doing is inflicting pain. Maybe that’s the secret to how I was ever able to love Esther. She was always this person. Maybe I didn’t see it because I knew, on some level, that she was foe, not friend. Maybe I wanted her because she wanted to punish, and to be punished, not pleasured. She never got aggressive with me, of course. She wanted to keep our roles in her drama exactly as they were. We occasionally brought in a third so she had an eager volunteer to torment. I was already with Carla, off and on, but she was a stallion nobody could break. Spencer, when she was Sparrow, and Diane, the first Foxfire, were both frequent partners. I used to be very tender and gentle with my partners apart from Esther, so they both enjoyed getting roughed up a bit. Diane eventually decided Esther’s appetites were a little too much for her, but Esther and Spencer had enough of a spark that they frequently had encounters without me around. I had no problem with that, but they snuck around about it anyway. They liked making it feel naughty.

Without letting a word or a sound pass my lips that might carry a whiff of affection, I remove myself from Esther and stand several inches behind her while she gets her rubbery legs under her. “Tell me who she’s working with,” I say. “Oh come on,” Esther says, “can you really not figure that one out? I almost thought this was just a game, and you already knew. _Search your feelings_ , Skywalker, who do you think would move heaven and Earth, literally I guess, for somebody with Foxcatcher’s pretty face?”

“Red Queen,” I sigh. She’s right, I should have guessed that one. Before my sister Alice decided to carry on with her anything-you-can-do antics and go out fighting crime as White Rabbit, that identity was part of a roleplay she had with her ex-girlfriend Jackie. They dressed up as a superhero called White Rabbit and a villainess called Red Queen, and Alice would pretend to foil Jackie’s sinister plots, which always just happened to involve a friend of theirs in a storebought Alice costume being strapped into a sex machine and pretending to cry out for White Rabbit to save her. Alice would save the damsel, force the evil Red Queen to surrender by exactly the means you’d expect, and they’d go back to their ordinary lives the next morning. Eventually, Jackie took it too far, and Alice turned her back on her. Jackie decided she liked the thrill of being a supervillain a little too much, and adopted her Red Queen identity in earnest. It’s no surprise given her history that she’d be drawn to Foxcatcher.

“Where are they holed up?” I ask. “How the fuck would I know?” Esther says. “She was an occasional, well, a frequent booty call. She needed Jackie for her whole scheme, and the Red Queen strikes me as the jealous type. She loved getting to spend a little time with your double, but she only ever came over when she was bored with exploring the ‘royal hedge maze,’ or Jackie was distracted with her shrooms and her soldering iron.”

“So you don’t know anywhere I could even start looking for the woman I could have guessed I was looking for, who I only need to locate to find a second woman whose whereabouts you also don’t know. _I’ll be frank with you, Fink. That’s not helpful. Notice how I’m not writing it down?_ ”

“I just sold out a fine piece of ass for a quick, uncomfortable buttfuck in a cave from my jailer,” Esther says. “Sounds like your dream date,” I reply. “I’m probably never going to get to fuck Foxcatcher again now,” Esther says. “And I’m sure you can imagine how fun I found that filthy little fantasy. You’re my real one and only, of course, but how could I resist that?”

“If you keep giving me bullshit, you’re never getting another ‘interrogation’ from me,” I say. “You sure you’ve got nothing else? Maybe if you give me one of your own safehouses I can even go get you your knockoff Hannibal Lecter mask you wear with your Catherine Trammel cosplay and that ridiculous hat. It would be a lot more appropriate now that you’re finally getting to bitch at me from a plastic box like you always dreamed.”

“Just go hunt down Foxcatcher already,” she says. “I’m sure it burns you up that you have exactly one enemy you haven’t fucked yet, and she’s about to get away.” More juvenile jabs. I turn around to leave the cell and see Kelly, still standing guard. She knew I was willing to debase myself like this to bring justice and safety to the city, even with Esther, but she looks a bit uncomfortable. She isn’t disappointed, but seeing it happen firsthand, for real, might have been a little more difficult than she expected.

“Hi Sparrow,” Esther says with a mockingly girlish wave of her manacled hand in the short time between the door opening and closing. “I can probably get hard again if you guys want to switch places. And if you want to come back later, you know my address, right?” She tries to pretend she’s pretending, but I know she’d kill for a shot at Kelly.

“It sounds like next time we’d get better results if I got a turn,” Kelly mutters to me as we walk away from her cell. “Spencer tells me she has a thing for Sparrows.” Kelly is also putting on a joking tone, but I think this is also a double-bluff whether she realizes or not. Kelly likes to be handled a little roughly. Sometimes more than a little. She’s always been more eager to sample, or especially be sampled by, our enemies, even the ones truly evil enough that I’d crack a cyanide jawbreaker before I let them get their hands on me. Kelly is devoted and level-headed, but she has a little bit more of Sierra’s fun-and-games attitude about heroics than she thinks she does, primarily when it comes to her barely-concealed lust for the horrific charisma of New London’s most depraved. I wouldn’t judge her too harshly if she let herself into Esther’s cell, but I would never tell her that, not because she’d take it as permission or a suggestion but because she’d be offended. I’m sure she thinks that’s the last thing she wants.

In the Nest, I try by multiple means to get a hold of Alice. I’m sure she has intel on Red Queen, but Jackie has always been wily, and even Alice might not know precisely what she’s up to. “White Rabbit” tangles with all my foes when she gets the chance, but Jackie is the only one who is uniquely hers, and she devotes a good amount of attention to her accordingly. My sister stays busy out there, though. She does this for fun. She’s pretty good, honestly, but it’s a hobby. When she has free time, she slaps on that alabaster bondage outfit and hits the streets. It does make her hard to keep tabs on, especially since she stopped wearing her earpiece. She said she liked working with me occasionally, but that she didn’t want to be “Outfox’ fourth or fifth sidekick” instead of her own heroine. That’s fair, but sometimes having her on more-than-speed-dial would really help, Alice. Just saying, sis.

I hear the hatch to the Burrow open as Kelly comes back, and she’s not alone. Spencer and Pru are here. “So there’s this weird rumor going around that you’re keeping a woman hostage in your basement,” Prudence says, “but obviously that’s…oh look.”

“How’s life in the NLPD, Captain Madison?” I ask, knowing that Spencer is not an enormous fan of her girlfriend’s day job as a cop. "Banner fuckin' year if your idea of police work is killing unarmed black women without a verdict,” she sighs, “or a trial."

"Or charges,” Spencer adds, “or probable cause. God, it's so weird that the police in New London are that racist, when the world's wealthiest black woman lives right here!"

"That was kind of a cheap shot,” Pru says, “but, like…yeah."

“I appreciate your interest in the good work the Nina and Dorothy Miller Foundation does for this city’s most impoverished young people,” I needle Spencer. “Yeah,” she responds, “starting a school that teaches kids living in a condemned project at Byrd and Woods how to code is definitely going to save the world.” Ignoring her jabs entirely, I ask, “Is there anything we can do for you ladies?”

“I wasn’t kidding about Esther House,” Pru says. “What are you going to do, keep her here forever? She needs to put somewhere that can handle her.”

“I’m not saying this is an option,” I say. “I just don’t know what else I can do that isn’t even less of an option. If we haul her in we’re going to have to explain why one of Outfox’ worst enemies had herself turned into a perfect copy, mostly, of Zora Miller. And that’s if she inexplicably decided not to tell them herself as soon as she came through the door. I’ve been doing this shitty broken tango with her for six years. Let me handle this.”

“So go public,” Pru says. “You’re in the goddamn United Heroes, Zora. Are you afraid they’re going to arrest you for being Outfox? I think they’ll be too busy deporting Hyperspace for being an illegal immigrant from another fucking dimension. I hear they’re swamped already trying to subpoena the Pope to testify against God for the Flood.”

“It’s not about that,” I say. “It would put a target on me and everybody I care about.” “In case you haven’t noticed,” Pru says, “everybody you care about is a trained badass. They can handle themselves, I imagine.” “Not with people knowing their fucking address,” I retort. “Most people know the President sleeps at 1600 Penn, too,” Pru snarks, “but unfortunately, nobody’s managed to shoot the bitch yet.”

“So you want us to live under constant security,” I say. “Keeping one woman locked up sounds a lot easier than doing it to all of us.”

“I agree,” Spencer says. “I didn’t come here to tell you to give her over to the filth.”

“You told me we weren’t going to have this discussion again,” Pru says.

“I would never tell anybody to do this in a situation where it’s not absolutely necessary, and warranted, by the way,” Spencer says defensively, “but there’s literally no way out of this. She can’t stay here, and she can’t go anywhere else. Where does that leave us?”

“Christ,” I shout, “you just want me to kill her?”

“No, I don’t want that,” Spencer says, “but what’s your idea?” “We’re doing my idea,” I say, “this is my idea, and this is what we are going to continue doing until I come up with a better idea than a Secret Service detail for twenty or thirty people, or dumping chunks of her in three different rivers, fucking hell.”

“Fine,” Spencer says, “keep doing the same half-assed bullshit you’ve always done. I’m sure Diane really appreciates that Fantome is running around free, ten or eleven or twelve years later. Is there absolutely no line for you? Where is the line? Killing Fantome is murder, killing Mother Eve is murder, Satan herself could be walking the Earth and you’d call the fucking cops on her. And if they couldn’t pin charges to her, you’d keep her in a shoebox under your bed like a little girl who thinks the rattlesnake she found in her yard is just too cute.”

“So? I’m not about to stand here lamenting the fuckin’ decline of due process while you tell a random civilian that she has the right to execute motherfuckers without trial on the basis that she’s rich and she looks good in black fuckin’ spandex,” Pru says. “This is literally the opposite of what we’re working toward.”

“So’s holding onto your badge while the city burns, Captain Prudence,” Spencer says as she walks back up the steps. “You’re right, we shouldn’t bother having this conversation again.”

Pru pauses for a second and says, “I know I’m not going to change your mind.” She sees that I’m still watching Spencer intently as she leaves the Burrow. “She doesn’t hate you like you think she does,” Pru says. “No matter what I try to do with my precinct, she hates that I’m a cop a hell of a lot more than she hates you for being Outfox. And no amount of arguing over that has ever made her love me less.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” I sigh, “but it doesn’t matter if she loves me if she thinks she hates me.”

“I can talk to her anytime,” Pru says. “She listens to me about anything but the two or three things she really, really doesn’t.”

“I still think this is just our thing,” I say, “I appreciate it, but no thanks. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. And right now I’m not sure I want to make amends myself with somebody who wants to walk into Esther’s cell with a gun and start shooting bound prisoners.”

“She’s not wrong that you’re fucked here,” Pru says. “I just think there’s a different least-fucked option than she does. You know that if I’d ever had a gun to Fantome’s head, I wouldn’t make the same decision you would make. Esther has killed people, and not people like Esther. And they didn’t exactly die of natural causes, surrounded by grandchildren. It was ugly. I saw it. I wouldn’t do it like this, but if she gave me a reason?”

“I know it’s not the wrong thing to do,” I admit. “It’s just not my right thing to do. I know what my job is. I protect people, and I don’t think I get to decide who deserves it.”

“You could protect a hell of a lot more people if you didn’t feel that way,” Pru says. “I know,” I say. Pru throws an arm around my shoulder and gives me a peck on the cheek. “That’s from both of us,” she says, and ascends the Burrow steps.

Kelly, who had mostly been sitting out the awkward reunion she had decided to throw me pretending to read some papers in the Nest, ducks back into the room. “Spencer, Charlie, Diane,” I say, “does it bother them that you haven’t flown the nest yet? Your name could be Raptor or something. You could start carrying guns like Charlie, or hate-fucking the police one at a time like Spencer. Raise an army against me, like Diane.”

“The Wild Hunt isn’t ‘against you,’” she says, “they just have a different approach. She’d let you work with them sometime if you wanted, mend some fences.” “Fences keep people out,” I say, “wouldn’t mending them mean you don’t want anybody getting past them?” “Some of them actually really like you,” she says. “I don’t want pity friendship from the treehouse pals of a woman who thinks I put her in a wheelchair,” I say.

“They do think I’m kind of a sap for sticking with you,” Kelly says, “but I don’t let it bother me. Because they’re wrong, and usually they’re not total bitches about it. They still look back on more of their Sparrow days fondly than you think. Hell, Charlie never had a problem with you at all, you’re the one who cut her out.”

“She started running around Moses and Nixon in a skull mask and body armor shooting drug dealers,” I say, “the question is how she and Spencer haven’t killed each other yet. Spencer thinks I’m a fascist thug, what the hell is Blood Eagle?”

“If nothing else,” Kelly says, “trauma bonds people. And none of them really feel like you’re the source of that trauma, you’re in the same shit we are.” Kelly and I head back upstairs, hoping to turn in early after a night less physically demanding than most, but emotionally fraught. We drop our costumes at the door and kick them into the corner.

“They like you,” I say as we lie in bed. “Which means they can’t hate you that bad,” she says, “because I don’t get it either. I’m all in on all the shit you do that they seem to get so mad about.” “Well I think it’s just physically impossible to be mad at you,” I say. “That’s true,” she says, “a doctor told me that once.”

Kelly lays a hand on my waist. “This Sparrow is never going to go anywhere,” she says. “I will always love you, and I will always trust you.” Carla will be gone all night, and I’ve already told her that we’ll be asleep then, so she’ll be sleeping elsewhere. I expect she’ll follow Naeva back to her room once they get back, slipping into her bed, among other things. I love that I have two women so wonderful to sleep between, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in this bed with just Kelly. I couldn’t honestly say I love one more than the other, but they’re different. Carla loves me like we’ve always been together, like we’ve already grown old together. Kelly loves me like oxygen, like water in the desert. Obviously that intensity conjures the idea of lust, but I don’t just mean sexually. Sometimes I will see the way she looks at me and ask myself if I’ve ever looked at somebody with that uncomplicated, unabashed, unconditional adoration.

I pull her toward me for a kiss, and she twitches like I slid a finger up her ass. She gets absolutely drunk on me sometimes, and it makes me become an animal. Then she sees how badly she’s making me want her, and it makes her need it even worse, this feedback loop perpetuating itself until we’ve emptied each other to the point of dehydration.

“You got really rough with her in there,” Kelly says, “I don’t want you to hold back with me. There is nothing about any part of you I don’t want.” She loves Zora Miller, but right now she wants Outfox. “Then you’re going to do whatever I tell you to do,” I say with a grin, “and tonight I want to be the one who gets fucked.” “I need it,” Kelly says with a borderline whine. “Maybe you’ll get it,” I say, “but first you have to earn it. You look so adorable pumping away with those skinny hips, that tight little ass humping up and down. You get so flustered once you get close. Watching you with Jenny made me fall in love with the way you work that perfect little g-spot wand you’ve got all over again.” I didn’t want to indulge Jenny’s insistence that I watch my girlfriend fuck her; I was willing to go through with it, but I didn’t want Sharkbait to know I was as turned on by it as I was. She probably got that memo when I felt her for myself and almost melted, though. Seeing Kelly thrust desperately into a muscled but still impossibly voluptuous carnal cryptid twice my size, let alone hers, was an experience for the ages.

I turn onto my back, opening my legs. It must make Kelly furious to be asked to do this while she can see my fully erect cock pointing straight up over the pussy I’m expecting her to somehow focus on. If she’s upset, though, she’s not showing it. She starts the process dutiful, but once she’s gotten into me this starts to feel more like a favor I’m doing her. She whimpers and trembles like she’s about to finish already, but I know she isn’t. She’s just like this. Her huge, round glasses, which I am eternally grateful she rarely takes off even during sex, were constantly threatening to slide off her nose, reminding her to steady herself.

Her hands plant themselves on my hips, partly to hold herself up, but she also once let me in on the fact that it’s actually her favorite part of me to touch. She loves my large breasts, my firm belly, my muscular butt, and just about everything else, but she said having her hands on my hips just felt utterly intimate. “My hands rest there for even a second, and no matter what we’re doing, I feel like I’m inside you,” she said. “I just suddenly have this feeling come over me, this primal fucking feeling, like I’m grabbing you to fuck you.” She was a bit drunk at the time, and when she’s had a few she not only gets quite unfiltered, she gets out of her head in a way that makes her develop a taste for being the one who fucks. It’s wonderful, since she too often neglects that side of me, but I prefer the way she does it when she’s stone sober and she gets all nervous and overwhelmed.

Kelly slows and eventually stops, which is the only maneuver she has in her arsenal all but guaranteed to stay the hand of an uninvited orgasm. She does not really have the stamina issue her lovers sometimes tease her for, at least physically, but when she’s highly aroused she can sometimes get carried away, and it’s not difficult for us to get her highly aroused. Kelly is gorgeous, but she’s always been a little reserved. Becoming Sparrow brought her into a world where she had easy access to the perfect bodies of a seemingly endless series of costumed adventurers on all sides of the law. She has managed to withstand this parade of unthinkable sexual delights without becoming the slightest bit jaded, without becoming any less awestruck by it. She writhes and moans like a virgin bride on her wedding night every single time, crackling like thunder with ten thousand first-ever orgasms, and it’s the sexiest thing about her.

Watching Kelly take occasional pauses to slow her creeping progress toward the finish line, it occurs to me once again that I’ve been dwelling entirely on what’s going on, and what I imagine going on inside Kelly, and not on how it feels. Her average but also extraordinary prick has that distinct little curve upward, that unusually narrow taper at her very tip, that turns her every stroke inward into a jolt of undiluted thrill radiating from your g-spot throughout your body. That’s Kelly’s secret. Her reputation as a two-pump hotshot is partly a product of a lack of any need for her to restrain her orgasm. The majority of the time, she lets loose the moment she first feels it building because her partner has gotten there at least once already. It’s also pretty stunning what her little wonder does to the prostate.

I find my legs kicking, my ass clenching and my stomach contracting to push out a shout, all before I even feel that first step off the cliff. I feel a spasmodic series of rapid but regular squeezes echo through my flesh as it hosts her still-thrusting dick, probably triggering the immediate shot she issues when my own climax takes hold. This one is what I’ve come to know as a “two-stager.” Most of the time, when I orgasm from vaginal stimulation, my cock shoots off right along with it, and very infrequently, I have a totally “dry” orgasm that’s confined solely within. This one is more elaborate, an independent vaginal orgasm surging through me that kicks off a separate but immediate ejaculation once it has reached its apex. Cumming both ways at once is stunningly intense, but I think I prefer these compound events, as they last longer than you’d think an orgasm could. I’ve had “moments” longer than others, with both sets of equipment and my prostate as well, but having two consecutive orgasms of entirely different varieties is hard to beat. It is, however, a bit draining.

Kelly, her bare chest and small but audaciously perky breasts splashed indecently with my seed, struggles to stay upright after her own tiring finish. I pull her down, chest to my chest, slathering myself with my own release just to give her license to fall forward into me as she clearly wants to do. It doesn’t take much blood to raise her to full glory, so she’s still almost completely hard inside me even now, poking little aftershocks into my entire body’s most tender square-inch every time she exhales. It’s too much too soon right now, but I wouldn’t trade her utterly exhausted frame lying on top of me, head resting on my breast, limps legs motionless between mine, for anything.

“Is that what you wanted?” she eventually whispers. “I did really like that too.” “You were as magical as ever, sweetie,” I say, putting my hand gently on the back of her head. “You’ll get your turn in a second.”

Given the situation my load and her worn-out plop have created, we end up taking a nice, warm shower together first. In the state we’re both in, it’s not all that sexual. She also can’t stand the water as hot as I like it, which is why we rarely do this. It’s not until we’re both clean and rinsed and about to exit that I catch myself looking at her that way, taking in the gymnast-perfect muscles under every inch of her skin, her yardstick-straight posture down to the way she constantly adjusts one foot whenever the other moves to maintain her ballerina balance, the taut renaissance-sculptor-perfect curve of the ass that made gluteal connoisseur Carla say “I’ve never seen a skinny girl I’ve wanted to just…break in half, the way I needed to do to her,” the morning after the first time we were all intimate together. Even after what had just unfolded, I start to feel the stir. As Kelly reaches for the shower curtain after turning off the water, I say, “Stop.” She looks up and immediately understands that I just need to look at her in this moment. I see her adoring eyes, almost tearful with longing, break from our shared gaze and drift down the rest of my body, Kelly also finally ready to bask in the simple pleasure of my nude form again. Her loins do not merely stir. As I said, her first stirrings are almost always a near-instant full erection.

After we towel off with sufficient haste that we are still just a bit too damp, Kelly lies on the bed, dead center, and without saying anything pulls her own legs back, shooting me a look that even without words feels less like a plea and more like an unconditional demand. I stand over her, looming like doom, match her look with my most domineering, borderline disdainful glare, and say simply “Not like that.” I would be fine with romance and valentine hearts right now, but I know what she wanted before and she has waiting too long already. I walk over to the corner of the room, pick up every part of her Sparrow costume, and toss them onto the bed, including her boots, belt, mask and gloves. “I want what they all want, all the creeps in this city. Tonight I want to fuck Sparrow.”

Without any hesitation, she puts on the full costume. It’s not like we’ve never done this before, and between on-the-job quickies and barely-in-the-door whirlwinds of passion in the Burrow, we’ve had sex in our suits plenty of times even without the deliberate turn into kink. There are multiple reasons her suit, like most of ours, has a single pair of snaps in just the right place to give intimate access without removing a single piece of anything anywhere.

Once she’s assembled her second skin, I simply say, “Face down on the bed, legs together, arms behind your back.” “Are you going to put yours on?” she asks. “I’m not tarted up for you,” I spit back with mock-cruelty she always relishes, “you’re dressed up because you’re my toy, and I want to play with that cute little Sparrow girl who shows her tight acrobat ass and her toned little legs all over town, waiting for somebody to hold her down and fuck her.” By this point, I’m standing by the side of the bed, applying copious lube to myself. I put one knee on the bed so I can get close enough to smear the excess from my hands onto her strong thighs, then I climb onto her, letting my full weight pin her down, albeit distributed evenly across all of her to keep from crushing her.

“Let’s talk about a fantasy I know you have,” I say. “You wake up, you don’t know where you are or what you remember last. You’re face-down in some dank alley, so late at night nobody can hear you struggle when you realize your hands are tied behind your back and your feet are bound. You hear footsteps, and suddenly somebody is on top of you. You don’t even know who it is. You feel them rip a hole in your suit right over your perfect little ass, and they jam themselves into you before you can shake them off. You turn your head to the side, and you catch a glimpse of who it is.”

Kelly’s breath is almost short, her legs pulled side to side as her toes, I’m sure, curl and release involuntarily, over and over again. “Who is it?” I ask. She hesitates. “There’s no wrong answer, little bird,” I say, “if you have to be somebody’s slut, who is it going to be?” “G-G-G-“ she sputters. It’s not a physical response, she doesn’t want to say it. “Gamekeeper,” she says.

I laugh a distinctly villainous laugh that was not a put-on to any degree. “Your girlfriend’s mother?” I ask. “Oh my God, you are a naughty girl. I don’t even know if she has a dick.” “We’ve never…” she says, “we’ve never had anything like…that…happen with her, none of us have.” “So that’s all? You just want what you haven’t had?”

“She’s beautiful,” she admits, gulping for air like the words were stuck so hard in her throat they were choking her. “The overdone smoky eye, the butch tailored suits, that ridiculous carnival barker voice she uses when she’s being all evil and clever, that plump bottom lip, that little nose stud she got when she quit being a villain, that fucking…”

Kelly pauses, exhaling deep so she can resume breathing normally, like she’s just had an orgasm. “That I-have-you-now-my-pretty menacing way she looked at me and talked to me when she was tormenting us with her games. She liked it. She was doing it for fun. She went so arch and luxuriously wicked that I expected her to just shout ‘Guards! Take her away! I’ll see to her later!’ and have me washed and brought to her chambers.” She starts panting again. “Every time I was hoping she’d rip my costume off and make you and Sierra watch while she fucked me, and you couldn’t do anything to stop her. I’d pretend to fight back so that she’d keep pinning me down, keep working at it harder and harder as I struggle. I’d scream and beg her to stop just so I could see her get off on it. But she was just flirting, just vamping like villains are supposed to do. I wanted her to take me. I didn’t even want her to know I wanted it. I wanted her to enjoy it even more because she got to watch me squirm and suffer. Every time she had us tied up, every comment she made about what a cute little thing I was, every time she leaned just a little too close, touched my face just a second too long, I was rock hard. I wanted it to be real. I wanted her to use me. She made me feel…she made me feel like a little girl getting caught peeping at her friend’s mom. And she sees me, and she tells me I’m being a naughty girl, but I can tell she’s flattered, that she likes to know she can still turn our heads. And she scolds me for it, but with a flirty smile she can’t keep inside. She made me feel like a bad girl. She made me feel like she had total power over me and it was making her as hard as I was. Maybe it was, even if she didn’t want to do anything. Maybe she went back to her hideout every night and had to jerk off thinking about me, and tell herself that it was too far, that she could never do that, hold me down and fuck me like that. I was her daughter’s age. It was…naughty.”

I was so wrapped up in her story that it takes me a second to collect my thoughts. She must be wondering why I’m not saying or doing anything. I position myself, and push the tip inside. I gently dig a little deeper before saying, “You want me to hold you down and just force it in, little girl? That’s disgusting. You want me to tie my own daughter up and make her watch? You do deserve this.” She moans like last breath.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, little Swallow,” I say, “we’re going to play another game. I’m going to fuck you, you little whore, and you’re going to pretend you’re a good girl, who doesn’t want to get tied up in an alley and fucked into oblivion by her future mother-in-law, and you’re going to try to get away. Pretend you don’t want this cock inside you. Try to save yourself before I get a bit carried away and rip your little asshole open like I did with all the others. Do it.”

Kelly doesn’t half-ass it, and neither do I. She really wants me to put up a fight, really wants me to fuck her up a little, and the only way to do that is to put all her might into breaking away. There’s very little chance she can. Between the weight I have on her and my strength, this is a foregone conclusion, but every move she makes requires a counter, and she is living for the feeling of me making her struggle. “Please stop!” she moans through mock-tears. “It hurts! Stop!”

Leaning down for a second, I whisper into her ear, “If you really want me to stop, say ‘Danger.’” “Okay,” she whispers. “Please!” she says, continuing to try to shrug my weight off. “Please, stop! Oh God!” “You’re really tight,” I hiss in her ear, “it feels good when you squirm.”

“You’re hurting me,” she whines, “let me go, please.” Kelly told me once that she might want to try something like this, and I was a little disturbed by the idea, not that she would enjoy something like that but by the idea of doing it myself. I thought that the moment it started to feel “real,” I would become disgusted with myself. That’s probably true. The difference is, it doesn’t feel real at all. Physically it does, and I admit I find those aspects of it almost as perversely exhilarating as she does. But there is very little of my mind that isn’t consciously very aware of how much she wants this, that this is just a fantasy. It feels the way it feels when I’ve done things in the past like handcuff her, or give her some sort of command, like telling her when she can’t, or when she must, cum. It feels a little more dangerous, a little darker, sure, and I’m not thrilled with that myself, but the idea of her getting off on this herself is strangely alluring. The decadent streak hidden behind her bookish, scrupulous demeanor is truly thrilling to me.

“Too late, Swallow,” I say. “You’re about to lose. You know why?” “Oh God,” she says, “please, don’t, not inside me. Please stop. Pull it out. Pull it out!”

“I’m going to dump so much cum inside you. I’m going to leave you tied up here with your gaping hole packed with me. Anybody who passes by is gonna see the great Sparrow lying face-down in the dirt, oozing my cum, your hole destroyed, and they’re gonna have a go themselves, they’re gonna pass you around until you’re so worn out they can’t even feel it. Then they’re gonna leave you where they found you until something comes along with a big enough cock that you can finally feel something again, and it’s going to pull you inside out. Do you like that, little bird?”

Kelly starts positively yelping, and I feel the twitches and convulsions of her orgasm. As I did to her, these motions send me over the edge. My aching balls struggle to produce anything more after being thoroughly depleted by two white-knuckle climaxes already tonight, but the feeling is sheer bliss. The noises coming out of Kelly change, though. It sounds like sobbing, the right side of her pace pressed firmly against the bed as her body goes limp following the strength leaving her muscles. I’m concerned by this until I hear “I love you,” Kelly barely getting the words out between panting breaths and eye-watering chokes of emotion, “I love you so much. Thank you.”

Lying together in the aftermath of something that should rightly have been an enormous mistake, I hold a deeply satisfied, visibly enamored Kelly and try to gently poke around to make sure I didn’t cross some line she doesn’t yet know I crossed, drowned as she obviously is in the afterglow of the act itself. “I didn’t get too rough, did I?” I ask. “No, no,” Kelly says, her tone seemingly pointing more toward her having wanted even more out of me, “I loved it.” “I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” I add. “Did I make you uncomfortable?” Kelly asks me. “I know I really went for it with the fighting, the crying for help, I hope that wasn’t too much.”

All that, and I’m the one she’s worried is traumatized. She’s right, though. I was a lot less prepared for what she was doing than she was for my part. When she started really playing it up, though, as much as it felt wrong, it also gave me a sort of permission. If she was willing to take it that far, it made me feel like what I was doing was less out-of-bounds. That was her way of telling me to go further, and I’m actually starting to worry that I didn’t go far enough.

“It was a little awkward,” I admit, “but it showed me how into it you were, and that was really sexy. I don’t really have fantasies about…stuff like that, especially not as the aggressor, but in a weird way I think it’s kind of sexy that you do. It’s just so…”

“Naughty?” she says teasingly. “Yeah, you like that I can be a sick little bitch sometimes, don’t you?” She digs her fingers into my ass. “So you don’t fantasize about being the aggressor. That means sometimes you want to be the victim, doesn’t it?”

“I won’t say I’ve never been tied up in an abandoned funhouse or a chemical plant and gotten a little thrill out of the idea that I’m going to be ravished by some sadistic but oddly glamorous brute,” I say. “They’re always weirdly gorgeous, supervillains,” she muses. “It’s like they all came from Central Casting.”

“So are we going to talk about your Parker Bradley fetish?” I ask. “Oh God,” she says, clearly embarrassed that she actually said all that out loud. “Sierra doesn’t know, I take it,” I say. “I mentioned her mom was pretty once, and she didn’t really react. I would absolutely die if she found out. Not just because it’s gross, but like…their whole thing is messy.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I thought you really hated her.” “I don’t hate her,” she says, “but she’s toxic. She’s not good for Sierra. I had two pretty crappy parents, and I know what it’s like. Maybe Parker’s a decent person if you’re not her daughter, but she also turned Jameson Square into a live game of _Stratego_ with real bombs, so I’m guessing she was never exactly the picture of normalcy.”

“That’s what made Sierra really lose it,” Kelly says, sitting up a bit as she really gets passionate on the subject. “It was always because of the games. It had to be the games. Parker was never a super attentive mom, but the one thing she did right was the games. She used to make up little puzzles and games for Sierra when she was really young, and as she got older, she didn’t stop. The games just got more and more elaborate. Her birthdays would be all-day marathons of scavenger hunts and activities, all with one big theme and one big prize at the end. I wish I had known Sierra when we were in school, because that sounds fucking amazing. She was lazy, she barely cooked, she kept a horribly messy house, she didn’t take much of an interest in Sierra’s hobbies, Sierra was always kind of a jock, but Parker had her games. That was the one thing they always had. And when Sierra saw what that had become, it destroyed everything. The one thing she’d enjoyed about having lived with Parker instead of her other mom was now the single worst thing about her. I’m not surprised she can’t get past that. I really believe Parker is a different person now, but I can’t expect Sierra to care, not after all that. I think they should keep their distance for a while. But it’s been a while now, so maybe they’re ready. I don’t know, we’ll see.”

“That’s completely fair,” I say. “I know you’ve always been in Sierra’s corner on this, and you’ve been very good for her. That’s why it was surprising that, you know…”

“God,” she says, “when she’s looming over you, when she gently strokes your cheek, when she cackles that evil laugh, I don’t know, it’s just crack for me. You know how I told you one of my first boners was Tilda Swinton as the White Witch? That scene with Edna, where she’s a little too close to her, and it comes off as weirdly sexual? That’s what she is for me. She makes me feel like that kid, and I’m scared but I’m also just now finding out what ‘horny’ means. I used to imagine I was Edna in that scene the first few times I actually jerked off. The way Parker lorded over me, it was like she stepped right out of the fantasy, and I just wanted to scream ‘take me, take me now!’ But I didn’t, not just because it was unprofessional when you’re, you know, a superhero, but because I wanted her to just take me. I wanted her to think I didn’t want it. I didn’t want her to lose that evil glee, I wanted to see how much she loved holding me down and making me take it. Is that wrong?”

“Well yes,” I joke, “but I won’t tell anybody.” “At least not Sierra,” she laughs. “You can mention it to Parker if you want, but don’t tell me you did. I want it to feel real if she decides to surprise me one day with some heroine-in-peril fun.” “You’d actually do it?” I ask. “Well, probably not, not really. Sierra would be devastated. Maybe one day they’ll be in a good enough place that it becomes weird for a totally different reason,” she says with another wicked giggle. “Until then, I have no shortage of sexy evil women ten or fifteen years older than me who want to chain me up in a gold bikini and take advantage of me, so I’ll survive somehow.”

I turn off the light, and try to drift off to sleep with Kelly in my arms. She probably doesn’t think I can feel her grabbing at her erect dick the whole time, so I sit still as a rock and enjoy the voyeuristic pleasure of feeling her crank out one last quick pop she doesn’t know I’m watching to lull herself to sleep. The moment she drops another load into our poor, embattled sheets, she is snoring in seconds. I love her so much.

**III. _The White Rabbit Returns_**

The great reunion after a few months between Zora “Outfox” Miller and her profligate thrill-seeker sister Alice, the daring White Rabbit, is held for convenience in the loft Diane Brady-Obari claims is not her apartment. Her residence is technically a tiny studio apartment in Bath, a trendy neighborhood where that shoebox costs over half as much this enormous nerd cave, taking up half of the top two floors of the least sketchy building on Nixon. This place is the headquarters for the Wild Hunt, but Diane sleeps here almost every night, as does Spencer, the first Sparrow. Spencer is pretty hot and heavy now with that cop girlfriend of hers, but she’s also been hot and cold with Diane for ages, and right now their off-and-on romance is in the “on” position. Spencer is also homeless, but that’s never stopped her before. She has always had a surplus of places to crash, and a public defender doesn’t exactly have money to burn, so she took the opportunity to deduct rent from her expenses and wisely took it. I believe she’s actually lived here for three or four years, even when she was on the outs with Diane. The original Foxfire has a hard time saying no to favors. That’s actually how she ended up with this team, really.

The Wild Hunt is Diane’s attempt to be proactive against the terrors of New London rather than just putting out fires as they pop up. The roster changes a lot. Daikatana, Electronica and Haywire are lifers. Superstar and Nobody are frequent features when they’re not back on their home planet. Peregrine, Blood Eagle, Sparrowhawk and sometimes Naeva, the new Foxfire, they all pop in and out when they have nothing better to do. Kelly never has, because she’s chummy with all these guys but she’s always been nervous about teaming up with the Hunt. Zora sees the whole endeavor as reckless and haphazard, which to be fair, it is, but she says the same thing about me.

Diane, calling herself Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, is sort of the nerve center of heroes in New London that aren’t affiliated directly with the Outfox team. She’s mission control for the Wild Hunt, but she’s also sort of a house mother for all of us. She’s a conduit for information and team-ups for the good guys much the way Idol is for the monsters and goons. She took on this role originally so she could mentor young heroes away from her own mistakes, and so she could feel like she was still in the fight after Fantome dropped her off a roof and into a wheelchair. Zora had to make a split-second choice between catching her and Sparrow, specifically Spencer. She still managed to slow Diane’s fall enough to save her life, but it’s increasingly unlikely she’ll ever walk again. Diane will tell you in a voice loud enough for Zora to hear her across town that she blames nobody for what happened, that if Zora had made a different call either Spencer would be in this state instead, or she would have tried to somehow save both at once, and they’d both be dead. The problem is, she made a decision. Making a decision in that situation is the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier to ignore that Zora went for Spencer first.

Zora never recruited Diane. Diane decided she wanted to help Outfox fight crime, so she put on a cheap costume and ran around calling herself Foxfire and shooting crossbow bolts at muggers. She eventually “ran into” Outfox herself after months of trying to catch up to her, and Zora was polite but concerned. This was before Sparrow. Zora wouldn’t meet an orphaned 21-year-old street kid named Spencer Johnson and decide to sanction her desire to punch crime in the twat for almost another year. 19-year-old Diane was also untrained and running around in a purple swimsuit and miniskirt shooting hand crossbows at people in the street. Zora sees these situations as very different, and her decision to let Spencer become the first Sparrow as a very deliberate one that she had not been ready to make yet. Foxfire was eventually half-welcome to the crew, especially once Spencer and Diane inevitably started dating, but Diane always felt that the real reason Zora saved Spencer was that, at best, she felt responsible for Spencer being there in a way she didn’t feel for Diane, who had sort of forced their partnership on her. At worst, Diane seemed to feel Zora subconsciously thought the risk would show Diane that what she was doing was dangerous. Not that she deserved to feel the “consequences” of her actions, but that if she came out of it she’d understand the reality of what she was doing. None of this is true, as far as I can tell. Zora says she was closer to Spencer. I tend to think the decision was pretty much random. Zora did have reason to feel more protective of Spencer, but Diane’s very recklessness did make Zora feel an instinct to keep her safe in much the same way. She had always liked Diane more than Diane believed she did, and it seems like that will always be the case now.

I work with Diane a lot in my freelance asskicking, so when Zora needed to see me, the easiest way was to meet up with me while I was at the Stable on other business. I’m not avoiding my sister deliberately, I just don’t have an easy time slowing down when I’m on a roll, and I’m always on a roll.

My name is Alice Miller. You might know I’ve been splitting a multi-billion-dollar fortune with my sister Zora since our parents were murdered twenty-three years ago, but you probably aren’t aware I’m also the badass superheroine White Rabbit, who smashes creeps and predators all over New London now that my sister Outfox’ presence has created a vast new wave of pantomime-worthy theatrical evil. Unlike some people, I fucking love being a superhero. It’s not some lust for violent retribution or some needlessly public sexual kink, although I must say both of those aspects are deeply enriching in their own ways. I just hate what people do to each other in this city, and there’s too much crazy here for one or two people to mop up. Outfox does good work. The Wild Hunt do good work. They’re also bickering, indecisive wannabe cops, although I’m hardly a one-woman war on wickedness myself, jumping around the rooftops on my own in white fetish leathers I bought for a sex game with my obsessed ex.

Diane is at her computer bank, as usual. Spencer leans against a door frame eating chicken lo mein out of a takeout container, like she’s a character in a workplace sitcom that’s trying to establish the characters have been working on something a long time. There’s generally a faux-casual print-ad-for-Hollister air to the whole place, really, but that might just be because Spencer really annoys me for reasons I’ve never been fully able to articulate. Look at her, with her haircut, and her shirt. Zora and Kelly arrive, breaking the tension that was hanging in the air and hanging up a bunch of new, different tension that will be a lot of fun to wade through.

“I have a list,” I immediately say. “I have a couple addresses of places Jackie might be, and a few places I know she’s used before that looked abandoned when I got there, but she might still be using since she doesn’t know I’ve seen them.” “And how did you arrive at these addresses exactly?” Zora asks.

What happened to “What happened to ‘Hello’?”

“Jacqueline Ripert doesn’t lay low at a cabin in the woods, I looked up abandoned anything around town and narrowed the list to the larger ones. She likes to have room to put her feet up, and she probably needs it for all the people she’s putting her feet onto,” I say. “And she always has her servants?” Kelly asks. “Slaves, you mean,” I clarify, “and yes, always. And even they need to sleep, so these addresses are your best bets. I had Diane whip this up.”

The conference table I’m standing next to springs to life, a 3D holographic display of half the city appearing all over it. Spikes jut out of six buildings in various shades of yellow, orange and red. “You didn’t have to do all that,” Zora says. “Well we needed to have a good at-a-glance to figure out where to hit first,” I say, to which Kelly quickly replies, “We would have just picked one and checked it out. Then another, if we were wrong, then another, then another two or three the next night. We just keep turning stones over until we get her.”

I really hope the look on my face adequately conveys my bafflement but also my disappointment. “Christ,” I finally blurt, “you guys think I’m the slipshod airhead running around pissing into the wind. Is that really what you guys do?”

Zora points at the tag above one of the spikes. “The deep red one, that’s your public enemy number one, right?” “Yeah,” I say, “I was going to-“

“Well we’d hit that one first, then, wouldn’t we?” Zora asks. “What were we going to talk about beyond that?” “This could have been a phone call,” Kelly says with uncharacteristic bluntness, “but you never answer your phone.” “This could have been a text,” Zora says, “just send us the addresses. You did the groundwork already, we could have started the legwork last night.”

“Well fuck me for thinking you might have some perspective or insight that might alter the goddamn matrix of information I spent an hour compiling for you, I guess,” I say with an overblown hands-up shrug. “Next time I’ll DM you on Twitter with the fucking addresses, and maybe a picture of me wiping my ass with the data I used to compile them.”

“What were you going to tell us about the sites?” Kelly asks with what seems, finally, like sincere curiosity. “Thank you, Kelly!” I shout a little too loudly. “I would love to go into more detail if you two don’t have a takeout order getting cold at Chili’s, or whatever you fucking need to get out of here so quickly to handle. I thought I was the one who was supposedly ducking you all this time!”

“All I meant was that this seemed like a lot of trouble for you, and you could have just told us the intel without the _Minority Report_ shenanigans,” Zora lied.

“Well I’ve already included this in the weights I gave them, but some of these are ones I’ve been to already,” I explain. “Like I said, she wasn’t there, and she doesn’t know, presumably, that I found them, but there were traces that she had been there, and she hops around a lot. Any of them could be active. But if they seemed like they hadn’t been occupied by her freakshow for a while, I bumped them down the list a bit. Those might be old.”

“This could be very simple, though,” I say, “because number one is far and away the hot ticket here. I’ve heard about a lot of missing persons between Byrd and Lovelace lately, and there’s an old Big Stuff in that area that’s been closed for like five years. It’s been empty forever and it’s just the kind of big space she loves. Makes her feel like she has a proper lair, and it’s hard to find anything that size in New London. It’s the biggest of the bunch, actually, which she would need if this sudden rash of missing people really is her.”

“Who are the missing people?” Kelly asks. “Don’t know a bunch about them,” I say. “Street kids who left home, none of them are under 18 but not much older either. Gang activity, their parents say, but they don’t know a lot. A lot of them weren’t around a lot anyway, but one day they just vanish completely, all in not a huge area. It’s Jackie’s MO, although these are big numbers for her.”

“Foxcatcher would also need a lot of space to work on this absurd machine she thinks she’s building,” Kelly says. “There’s warehouses for a lot of big industrial plants right near there,” I say, “and they didn’t used to get robbed as much as they have lately. Somebody’s been taking weird shit, shit so weird the companies won’t even say what it was. Sounds like our girl.”

“I’m glad to have you with us on this,” Zora says, “I know you want to take Foxcatcher down pretty badly. But I like having you around in general. We really don’t do this enough.”

“Not everybody lets your life’s gravity pull them into an orbit around your bullshit,” Spencer says. “Let her do her own thing, you don’t own her just because she’s your sister and you were a superhero first.”

“Not while I’m working,” Diane says in an artificially calm tone. She definitely agrees with Spencer, but she hates rehashing old arguments.

“I’m sorry, that was bitchy,” Spencer says, “but God, Zora, not everybody wants to goosestep down Moses braining the poor and mentally ill with you. Alice is allowed to have different priorities.”

“And she starts projecting like a fucking opera singer as usual,” I say, “that’s literally the fucking opposite of the situation. First of all, I’m the one still busting muggers’ heads in alleys, Zora goes after the big scary fish a lot more than me. And neither of us, sorry Zora, is actually avoiding the other. We just work differently. I actually enjoy this shit, again, sorry Zora, and she doesn’t. I’m not protesting her for being a fascist thug while I 69 my cop girlfriend like some people who shall remain nameless.”

“So you think I’m a hypocrite for calling out the NLPD on their shit now? Wow,” Spencer actually fucking dares.

“Fuck you,” I say very calmly, “you’re a hypocrite because you do actually give a shit, but you’re still fucking the only black woman with low enough self-esteem to be a captain in the goddamn New London police. Hashtag girlboss, hashtag resist.”

“Where are my headphones, Spence?” Diane asks during a rare quiet second.

“I think this is our signal to leave,” Zora says. “I’ll catch up in a second, you guys go ahead,” I say. Zora quickly exits, but Kelly lingers a bit, looking at me with concern, not pitying but affectionate.

“I understand why you have issues with Z,” I say to Spencer, “but that’s not what this is, with me and her. We’re different people, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I have issues with what she does, even when I do the same things, but not like that. And while we’re on the subject, I think you could have been a really good influence on her if you had stayed. She doesn’t listen to anything you yell at her no matter how true it is, and you know that.”

“I know,” Spencer says, “I yell it because these are not issues I feel any need to be polite about.”

“You’re not wrong,” I say, “but you know you’re not getting anywhere with her like that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Spencer says, “I’m not trying to get anywhere with Zora. I’m done with her. Zora Miller could sell everything she owns and toss the cash into the street while she drives down Woods and do more good than Outfox ever will. I only ever put on the Peregrine suit to take the fight to the people who deserve it. And you know what I really can’t handle? If I were doing my job right, because I’m doing about ten percent of what I know I should be, you know what Zora would do? She’d try to stop me. If I treated the corporations and the cops and the politicians who are the real threat to this city and its people the way I really ought to be doing, I’d be one of the bad guys. Carla, Octavia, they were better off who they were before they ever met Zora or any of us. Now they’re stuck playing nice, because they finally got the world they wanted, a world where one person could be more than a person, they could mean something, a world where one person could make a difference, represent an ideal, shape a new world, and what we’ve all decided to do with that new world is give people concussions for misdemeanors.”

“Zora spends the vast majority of her time taking out people who want to burn down the city or gut people on live TV. It’s me and Charlie and Sierra and the rest of the penny-ante street brawlers who are still cracking skulls in alleys. Hell, Charlie shoots them half the fucking time, and you’re not up her ass like this.”

“You get it, though,” Spencer says, “so why are you still cracking skulls in alleys?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I just wanted to be a superhero,” I say, “and sometimes I worry that that’s what we do.” I didn’t really think about what I was saying just then until now, but upon reflection it sounds like it’s true. “Maybe I’m not as much cooler than Zora as you think I am. I’m just another rich girl in leather who says I’m fighting evil but I’m really just pummeling crime.”

Spencer shrugs noncommittally, and after a beat she says, “You’re entitled to your boundaries with your sister. If you let her become your life, she will become your life. My advice, no matter how much you want to have a relationship with her, is to have it between Alice and Zora, not White Rabbit and Outfox. The best thing you could do right now is stay hard to find.” Spencer drops the mostly-empty takeout box in the trash can near Diane’s desk, wraps her fork in a napkin, leaves it on the desk, and heads into the bedroom, closing the door behind her as she says, “It’s not hard to be cooler than Zora, but you are.”

“I agree with most of that,” Diane abruptly announces her continued presence, “but I don’t know if ‘keep doing you, babe’ is the best advice for a rich dilettante, no offense, who does this as a fun hobby or, like, some weird way of getting some good cardio.”

“It has done wonders for my ass,” I say, “I get how Zora and Carla pull that off now.”

“But more importantly than…how bangin’ your sister’s ass is…you could actually die out there,” Diane says, “you know that, right?” “Obviously that’s a risk,” I say. “It’s not a risk,” Diane says, “risk is hypothetical. A baby putting their hand on a stove and getting burned isn’t risky, it’s inevitable. That’s no less true the first time than it is the second time.”

“I’ve been hurt pretty badly more than once,” I reply. “We all have. Charlie almost died, so did you. That’s real to me.” “Both of those things happened before you even started. Before you even knew Zora was Outfox, if I remember right,” Diane says, “Even if you could understand the gravity of putting yourself in mortal danger just because you were around it, you sort of weren’t.”

“I’ve accepted that risk,” I say. “Pretty soon, you’re going to have a scrape,” Diane says. “You’re going to feel that little glancing blow of death. Somebody is going to get a lucky swing with a knife or something. You’re going to decide that safety is in numbers, and you’re going to be wrong.” Diane finally turns her chair to face me, something I do imagine she’d have done earlier if turning a wheelchair were as trivially easy as spinning about in an office chair. “I’m not going to say you can’t trust Zora. In just about every way, you can absolutely trust Zora. You can trust her implicitly, but don’t trust her with your life. You will fall eventually, or somebody will, and you need to understand that she won’t always catch you. She will catch you almost every time. But it only takes one.”

“Nobody can catch you every time you fall,” I say, “and nobody lives forever.”

“Some animals live less forever than others,” she says. I begin to head out, and I encounter Kelly still waiting.

“I figured it would be nice to talk in private,” she says. “These all-hands affairs get really daytime TV really fast. I just wanted to say that Zora means it more than you know when she says we like having you around.”

“I know you like having me around,” I say to Kelly with just enough of a sleazy tone and flirty grin. We’ve always had a slight sizzle of chemistry, but she’s been hesitant to let things get much further than that with Zora’s sister. “Don’t,” she says laughing a little too hard, “you know that’s not going to happen.”

“If Zora learns to deal with letting me do my thing while she does hers, I’d absolutely love that,” I say, “but we both know how she does with people who don’t take orders.”

“She does expect to be obeyed,” Kelly admits, “but she also listens to advice. If you challenge her on a bad call, she’ll listen more often than you’d think. Unilaterally deciding not to do what she has considered carefully and landed on finally, that is not going to work with her. You have to be honest and you have to be willing to compromise. If she has to bend a little, so do you.”

“I would be fine with all of that,” I say, “but that’s never the impression I got from her.” “She’s not entirely the person she used to be,” Kelly says. “I think she always was that better person really, she just eventually realized she didn’t have to pretend to be somebody else. Give her a chance. If nothing else, we’ll get to spend more time together, I know you’ll like that.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s coming onto me.

“I don’t want either of us to string the other along if this isn’t going to happen,” I say bluntly, “and I know it isn’t.” “Who says that?” Kelly asks. “You should hear what I got up to with my girlfriend’s crazy mom last night.” “You will definitely have to tell me what you mean by that,” I reply. “Let’s go find Zora before Spencer finishes the pipe bomb she’s building in her room.”

**To Be Continued in Vol. 6!**

**Coming Soon: Mind-controlled human furniture! Furious exes! Dubious machinery! Parallel universes! Horny sisters? Nope! Pirate sodomy? Yes! Impractical experimental aircraft! A fourth narrator! Haunted mansions? No, just an obvious backdoor pilot, but not the one you think! More kinky roleplay! Horny daughter? Not really! The invention of lube! Zora’s unbeatable pull-out game! Meaningful post-coital stargazing! A life-changing question is asked!? There was no fucking ballerina, Jackie!**


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